NEW ORLEANS — I paid a visit to my old friend Mike Serio down here last week. He runs the biggest LSU hangout in New Orleans and has one of the best muffuletta Italian sandwiches in the city. I walked in hoping I’d get a good po-boy and a tale of hope, courage and perseverance.

I got the po-boy. But I also got a story of despair, desperation and deceit.

New Orleans pumped out a lot of propaganda leading up to Monday’s Bowl Championship Series title game in the Superdome. One of the little tidbits was New Orleans has nearly 900 restaurants, even more than it had before Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people and turned New Orleans into one giant flooded basement 2 1/2 years ago. New Orleans is coming back, they trumpeted.

They’re right about the number of restaurants. What’s wrong is a number of those restaurants aren’t much better off than when they were up to their hot plates in water in September 2005.

Take Serio. My first visit was in 2003 when his Serio’s Po-Boys & Deli on St. Charles Avenue near Canal Street was thriving and LSU was rolling. LSU fans poured in to celebrate the Tigers’ march to their second national title. Tourists poured in to see his purple- and-gold LSU motorcycle and Tiger memorabilia all over his restaurant. The place was packed.

Last Wednesday at about noon, Serio’s stood empty. I found him and his small staff chatting in the corner. And he was one of the flood’s lucky survivors. The hurricane caused minimal damage, and the looters left him alone. Turns out, feeding SWAT team members after the storm was a pretty good idea.

But 100,000 to 150,000 New Orleans residents haven’t returned after evacuating, tourism is still down 25 percent and skyrocketing property taxes and insurance rates are destroying the little hole-in- the-wall joints that make New Orleans my favorite restaurant city in the United States.

“The big guys are back,” Serio said. “Commander’s Palace. Brennan’s. Emeril’s. But the little mom-and-pop places like me, New Orleans institutions, I think we’re having a rough go at it.”

Serio, who hasn’t missed an LSU game since 1982 or a home game since 1970, is Italian. Emotion comes easy. When he sat in the Superdome four years ago and watched his Tigers win the national title, he and his brother openly wept. He found it hard talking about his fellow New Orleans restaurateurs, the born-and-bred New Orleanians who have a love for fine food and fine people.

He rattled off a string of restaurants that never made it back and others that are back merely because they have a sign up. If you come down to New Orleans, it’s no problem finding a table.

“It’s devastating,” said Serio, 56. “Small businesses are the lifeblood of any city. It takes the mom-and- pop businesses to make things go. If you want a city of Subways and Quiznos, go ahead. That might be gourmet food in Des Moines, Iowa, but it’s (BS) down here.”

St. Charles and Canal are on the western edge of the French Quarter. It’s not exactly off the beaten path, yet Serio’s, in its 50th year, has seen its business drop 50 percent. On Christmas Eve, Serio received a notice from the city telling him his property taxes doubled from $6,000 to $12,000. His insurance has tripled.

His three homes in the Lakeview neighborhood were destroyed. He commutes 65 miles every day from Hammond, unless he sleeps in the crude FEMA trailer on its quarter-inch mattress.

“I always consider myself a survivor,” Serio said. “I don’t quit. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. But I’m really getting discouraged. At some times, I feel like throwing in the towel, to be honest.”

Others, he knows, have it worse. His beloved brother Jack lost his Plantation Coffee House on Canal. He was out of business and out of work for two years. On Aug. 11, he died of a heart attack. He was 58.

“I consider him a Katrina victim,” Serio said.

The city is full of stories like this. Just down the street, Fred Rost of FredRick’s on the Avenue reported a drop in business of 28-30 percent. Though Katrina caused little damage there, looters made up for it.

Estimated damage was $100,000. Insurance, he said, covered $87,000, but he didn’t get a check until January. While he reopened in six months, he can’t find a dependable staff. The workforce is depleted.

“The federal government is still giving a lot of freebies away,” Rost said. “When the government gives you a $1,500-$1,600 subsidy, why work? Applicants are coming in here looking for 10 or 12 dollars an hour.”

He has cut the restaurant hours and the staff. However, these places have not cut their quality. My roast beef po-boy at Serio’s was just as good post-Katrina as pre-Katrina. For all of us who love prowling the back streets of this great city and finding wonderful dives, just as you can in Paris and Rome, let’s tip a hurricane glass to the little guy of New Orleans. Let’s hope he hangs on.

“Fortunately, I did have some money put away,” Rost said. “I kept it for a rainy day. But I didn’t think it would be a damn stormy day.”

Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson @ denverpost.com.